Books, arts and culture

The Q&A: Robert Wilson

Curiouser and curiouser

ROBERT WILSON, an avant-garde director, may very well be a connoisseur of difficult theatre. In a career spanning more than four decades, he has put on, among other things, an opera with Philip Glass about Albert Einstein; a performance of Shakespeare’s sonnets in German and English (with the music of Rufus Wainwright); and a production of the life and death of Marina Abramović, an experimental performance artist—still very much alive, she performed in the piece. Each show was marked by Mr Wilson’s distinctive use of artificial light, abstracted sets, and luminescent, mask-like make-up on his performers.

This weekend Mr Wilson’s production of Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” will have its Britain and Irish premiere at the inaugural “Happy Days” Beckett Festival, in the town of Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. This will be the first time that Mr Wilson has performed for almost a decade. This play, written in 1958, is less challenging to stage than some of Beckett's other works—there are no figures encased in urns or buried to their necks in earth. Rather, an elderly, “wearish” man sits at his desk and listens to a tape-recording he made as a 39-year-old: “Just been listening to that stupid bastard I took myself for thirty years ago, hard to believe I was ever as bad as that.” He sits, stands, pauses the tape, looks up a word he has forgotten the meaning of (“viduity”). The whole play is only nine pages long.

And yet, as with most plays by Beckett, “Krapp’s Last Tape” provides certain problems for a performer. It begins with a slapstick-like mime involving a banana, which requires a degree of preciseness in staging. The voice of a younger Krapp is similarly tricky, both in terms of timing and tone—not all productions manage to convey a sense of a younger voice. Most of all, like “King Lear”, the play demands a mature actor, one able to convey the mixture of world-weariness and humour Beckett’s play requires. Before performing at Enniskillen, Mr Wilson spoke to The Economist, over e-mail, about how he finally feels ready to play this role.

What first drew you to Beckett’s play?

In Beckett’s work, I like the contradictions, the irony, the humor, the distance, the formality.

In the early '70s I wrote and directed a play called a “Letter for Queen Victoria” and Beckett came backstage after one of the performances. It was a text of nonsense on which he complimented me. He also liked the humour, but was particularly interested in terms of how I used the edges of stage space. He had never seen a stage space so clear and meticulously defined before.

Some time later we met again and talked about actors. I was very surprised to learn that his favourite actors, such as Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin were the same as mine.

But it was actually Eugene Ionesco who reviewed my first play “Deafman Glance” who said “Wilson has gone further than Beckett”. I was actually very intimidated when I first met him.

I’ve always felt a kinship to Beckett’s world. In some ways, it is too close to my work. But only 35 years later, I decided to meet the challenge and do it.

“Krapp’s Last Tape” is your first appearance as an actor for almost a decade. How has this informed the way you went about your performance, and how you went about creating the production?

I was asked to do it, and I thought it was the right time to do something again on stage. I had directed “Happy Days” [also by Beckett] and since I was turning 70 years old I thought to do “Krapp's Last Tape”.

The challenge to do the work is to play the long silent part (almost 50 minutes) before he speaks and tries to bring humour to the play.

For the first 15 minutes of the play, you pace over the stage with the sound of rain falling. Could you tell us more about how you developed your own individual response to the play, away from Beckett's stage directions?

I first work on the visual book silently. I do all the movement, the light and the set and then I add the audio, text and sounds.

In “Krapp’s Last Tape” there are approximately 200 light cues. The light creates the space. Without light there is no space. This work makes use of light and dark, the light making the dark darker, and the dark making the light lighter. This piece makes use of a lot of shadows.

I use all of the techniques I have developed over the past 45 years as a director, designer and actor. I never studied theatre, I learned it by doing it. If I had studied theatre, I would not be making the kind of theatre I am making.

For most of the play, Krapp sits and listens to his younger voice. How did you go about choreographing this stillness?

I start with the light movement first which are not dependent on the audio score. They have their own structure and laws and can be performed separately. But when seen together, something else happens. They can reinforce one another without having to illustrate each other. I try not to impose any one means to a work. It remains an open question.

My work is formal. It is not interpretive. To me interpretation is not the responsibility of the director, the author or the performer: interpretation is for the public.

And what I have tried to do in my theatre is to show that what we see is what we see and what we hear is what we hear. And what we see can be as important as what we hear. As in life.